The present invention relates to an article storage facility comprising an article storage rack having a plurality of storage units, a movable body for conveying an article, and control means for controlling the actuation of the movable body.
In an article storage facility such as the one described above, an article-conveying movable body conveys an article between an article storage rack and a loading/unloading article support unit. Warehousing is thereby performed in which an article present in the loading/unloading article support unit is stored by a storage unit of the article storage rack, or retrieval is performed in which an article stored in the storage unit of the article storage rack is retrieved to the loading/unloading article support unit.
In a conventional example of this type of article storage facility, two article-conveying movable bodies are provided so as to move horizontally on the same track, and two loading/unloading article support units are provided so as to be disposed at both side branches of the article storage rack (see Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2002-175117, for example).
In Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2002-175117, one of the two movable bodies conveys an article between the article storage rack and one of the loading/unloading article support units, the other movable body conveys an article between the article storage rack and the other loading/unloading article support unit, and the two movable bodies simultaneously perform article conveyance, whereby the ability to convey articles is enhanced.
In the abovementioned Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2002-175117, a configuration is adopted whereby the storage unit that is the transfer target of one movable body and the storage unit that is the transfer target of the other movable body are in different positions in the horizontal direction of the rack when the transfer targets of the two movable bodies are storage units of the article storage rack.
Consequently, when a plurality of articles is transferred to a plurality of storage units that are in the same position in the horizontal direction of the rack and in different positions in the vertical direction of the rack, two movable bodies transfer an article one at a time, which can lead to a corresponding decrease in the ability to convey articles.